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Update on Submission To BSA

This week, Christopher is going to mail to BSA headquarters his official request for reinstatement of the Beekeeping Merit Badge.

The beekeeping community has been very helpful, and the documents posted here on Beesource have worked out well.

He had over 5,400 signatures on an online petition sponsored by Haggen Daz.

He had close to 1,000 on-line letters/messages of support from the Haggen Daz site. He had letters from beekeepers in other countries, including Canada, Sweden and Australia. Many of those letters were from persons involved in scouts.

He had about 1,000 other signatures on Petitions that people signed in person. Christopher gathered most of those signatures himself. He also received Petitions that had been circulated by scouts and beekeepers in Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Oklahoma, California, Florida, North Carolina, and West Virginia.

He received Resolutions that were passed by 20 different beekeeping organizations, all of which promised to teach beekeeping to scouts.

Different magazines, newspapers and TV stations published and broadcast information about his project.

He received pledges from nearly 300 individual beekeepers (many of them are also involved in Boy Scouts) promising to teach beekeeping to scouts.

He was also joined in his request by Dr. Dewey Caron, who is agreeing to lead a team of experts to write an updated Beekeeping Merit Badge Handbook.

So, bottom line, is that he will be submitting a pretty impressive request. BSA will have a difficult time concluding that there will not be support for the merit badge if they will reinstate it.

THANKS FOR ALL OF YOUR HELP!!!!!!

Also, if you have not sent anything to Christopher or pledged your support, there is still plenty of time to do that. It could take two to three years for BSA to make a final decision and implement the badge. During that time, we hope to periodically remined BSA that this request is pending and has support.